Greenpeace air pollution campaigners and medical professionals have blocked more than 800 Volkswagen staff from entering the company’s head office in Milton Keynes. Arriving at 7am, they barricaded the entrances with sick bay furniture and set up a diesel pollution clinic outside to offer advice and health checks to staff and members of the public.
Greenpeace is demanding Volkswagen commit to stop producing diesel cars and go 100% electric.

“We are obviously headed for the end of diesel”. You’d think these would be the words of someone campaigning for clean air or perhaps a mayor taking action to clean up the air of their city. But in fact they are the words of Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of Renault, who just this week announced that the company is ditching half of its diesel models and instead focusing on hybrid and electric cars. On the same day Peugeot announced they will stop research and development of new diesel engines to instead focus on electric cars. That’s just a week after Porsche confirmed that it is ditching diesel as the car-maker is moving towards 100 % electric cars.

The big German car makers VW (including Audi), BMW and Daimler (Mercedes-Benz) are looking increasingly isolated in their quest to push over more diesel cars on our roads rather than focusing on the switch to electric cars. And that’s good news both our health and the planet. Diesel fumes have been linked to Alzheimer, cancer and to stunted lung growth in children living in polluted cities. And while diesel was originally sold as a climate-friendly solution, it turns out that diesel cars are actually just as bad as petrol cars for CO2 emissions.

While we keep pushing for VW – the biggest producer of diesel cars – to abandon the polluting technology and go 100% electric, here is a handy list of the companies that are already ditching diesel.

These car companies are ditching diesel1: ToyotaIs dropping its sale of diesel cars in Europe this year